Balclutha woman Carol Creighton had given up on ever finding her lost eternity ring - until a friend dug up her vegetable garden.
"He said to me 'I think I've got a surprise for you'," Creighton said of her friend, Tom Dickson, when he handed her a bunch of carrots from her vegetable garden yesterday.
"He said 'what have you lost?'"
She saw the 82-year-old had a bit of dirt in his hands and the only thing she could think of was an eternity ring given to her by her mother.
Then Dickson, who knew she had misplaced the ring years ago, produced the carrot with the eternity ring neatly embedded in the vegetable. Creighton said she last recalled having the ring in 2006.
"I was in the garden and, as girls do, very proud of wearing their rings and what have you, I lost it."
The 76-year-old searched for it at the time, but to no avail. As the years went by she gave up hope of seeing it again.
She was so excited and overwhelmed to see it again that she pulled the green top off the carrot in surprise.
She had been out in her garden every year digging up vegetables, laying compost and planting seedlings and never found the ring, she said.
This month, Canadian woman Mary Grams found her engagement ring wrapped in a carrot after she lost it at her family farm in 2004.
- Otago Daily Times